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New Books in American Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in American Studies
Liz Bucar, "Stealing My Religion: Not Just Any Cultural Appropriation" (Harvard UP, 2022)
Liz Bucar is the Director of Sacred Writes, Professor of Religion, and Dean’s Leadership Fellow at Northeastern University. Bucar is an expert in comparative…
- New Books in American Studies
Mark T. Johnson, "The Middle Kingdom Under the Big Sky: A History of the Chinese Experience in Montana" (U of Nebraska Press, 2022)
From the earliest days of non-Native settlement of Montana, when Chinese immigrants made up more than 10 percent of the territory’s population, Chinese…
- New Books in American Studies
Phillip B. Levine, "A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students—and Universities" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
According to A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students—and Universities (U Chicago Press, 2022) a college education doesn't come…
- New Books in American Studies
Decoteau Irby, "Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership" (Harvard Education Press, 2021)
An incisive case study of changemaking in action, Stuck Improving: Racial Equity and School Leadership (Harvard Education Press, 2021) analyzes the complex…
- New Books in American Studies
Fritz Bartel, "The Triumph of Broken Promises: The End of the Cold War and the Rise of Neoliberalism" (Harvard UP, 2022)
Why did the Cold War come to a peaceful end? And why did neoliberal economics sweep across the world in the late twentieth century? In this pathbreaking study…
- New Books in American Studies
Peter S. Alagona, "The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities" (U California Press, 2022)
The Accidental Ecosystem: People and Wildlife in American Cities (U California Press, 2022) tells the story of how cities across the United States went from…
- New Books in American Studies
Truck Nuts: The Political History of Trucks and Trucking
The pickup truck is the symbol of rural conservative masculinity. So, it often takes centre stage in the tired culture wars between reactionary neo-populists…
- New Books in American Studies
Marcus Nevius on Becoming a Historian, Marronage, Slave Resistance, and More!
Today's episode of "New Books in African American Studies" is special. Why, you might ask? Because today's episode marks my 100th episode on the NBN! To…
- New Books in American Studies
Adam Abraham, "Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
In Attack of the Monster Musical: A Cultural History of Little Shop of Horrors (Bloomsbury, 2022), Adam Abraham chronicles the history of this hit musical…
- New Books in American Studies
Mark Clague, "O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of the Star-Spangled Banner" (Norton, 2022)
The national anthem of the United States is familiar around the world from Olympic medal ceremonies and American patriotic celebrations. Like anything that is…
- New Books in American Studies
The Tamiflu Trials: Profit and Public Health
Before Remdesivir and Hydroxycloroquin there was Tamiflu. To prepare for Swine Flu and Bird Flu, governments spent billions stockpiling this drug called…
- New Books in American Studies
William Alexander, "Ten Tomatoes that Changed the World" (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)
The tomato gets no respect. Never has. Stored in the dustbin of history for centuries, accused of being vile and poisonous, appropriated as wartime propaganda…
- New Books in American Studies
88 Underwater Eye: Margaret Cohen explores the Film Aquatic
Margaret Cohen joins John to discuss The Underwater Eye, which explores "How the Movie Camera Opened the Depths and Unleashed New Realms of Fantasy."…
- New Books in American Studies
Aria S. Halliday, "Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture" (U Illinois Press, 2022)
In Buy Black: How Black Women Transformed US Pop Culture (University of Illinois Press, 2022), Aria Halliday negotiates the line between "sell out" and "for…
- New Books in American Studies
Lee C. Bollinger and Geoffrey R. Stone, "Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of Our Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2022)
One of the most fiercely debated issues of this era is what to do about "bad" speech, hate speech, disinformation, propaganda campaigns, incitement of violence…
- New Books in American Studies
Meighen McCrae, "Coalition Strategy and the End of the First World War: The Supreme War Council and War Planning, 1917-1918" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
When the Germans requested an armistice in October 1918, it was a shock to the Allied political and military leadership. They had been expecting, and planning…
- New Books in American Studies
Tommi Koivula and Heljä Ossa, "NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes: Past, Present and Future Prospects" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)
In NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes: Past, Present and Future Prospects (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Dr. Tommi Koivula & Heljä Ossa argues that burden-sharing is…
- New Books in American Studies
The Heroin Clinic
At Crosstown Clinic, doctors are turning addiction treatment on its head: they’re prescribing heroin-users the very drug they’re addicted to. This is the story…
- New Books in American Studies
Anthony Christian Ocampo, "Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons" (NYU Press, 2022)
Growing up in the shadow of Hollywood, the gay sons of immigrants featured in Brown and Gay in LA: The Lives of Immigrant Sons (NYU Press, 2022) could not have…
- New Books in American Studies
He May Be a Communist!
We are back for a third season! The Russian invasion of Ukraine reminded us all that “everything old is new again” and that includes Cold War tensions, nuclear…
- New Books in American Studies
Jillian Peterson and James Densley, "The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic" (Harry N. Abrams, 2021)
Using data from the writers' groundbreaking research on mass shooters, including first-person accounts from the perpetrators themselves, The Violence Project…
- New Books in American Studies
John M. Kinder and Jason A. Higgins, "Service Denied: Marginalized Veterans in Modern American History" (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)
Wartime military service is held up as a marker of civic duty and patriotism, yet the rewards of veteran status have never been equally distributed. Certain…
- New Books in American Studies
This is Your Brain on Trial
Imagine reading or watching The Minority Report and thinking of that as a model for the criminal justice system. Well, plenty of forensic types are doing just…
- New Books in American Studies
E. James West, "Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr." (U Massachusetts Press, 2022)
Journalist, activist, popular historian, and public intellectual, Lerone Bennett Jr. left an indelible mark on twentieth-century American history and culture…
- New Books in American Studies
Merlin Chowkwanyun, "All Health Politics Is Local: Community Battles for Medical Care and Environmental Health" (UNC Press, 2022)
Health care is political. It entails fierce battles over the allocation of resources, arguments over the imposition of regulations, and the mediation of…
- New Books in American Studies
Pathological: The Work of Dr. Charles Smith
Dr. Charles Smith performed autopsies at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, ON. The cops kept turning to him with new corpses, and he kept claiming…
- New Books in American Studies
Sandra Eder, "How the Clinic Made Gender: The Medical History of a Transformative Idea" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
An eye-opening exploration of the medical origins of gender in modern US history. Today, a world without "gender" is hard to imagine. Gender is at the center…
- New Books in American Studies
Derailed: The Crisis of Forensic Expertise
When it comes to complex social problems, us “sensible” types turn to the experts, but what if they don’t actually know what they’re talking about? That…
- New Books in American Studies
On Herman Melville's "Moby Dick"
It makes sense that historian Nathanial Philbrick calls Moby-Dick the “American Bible.” Along with being a story of adventure and danger, it’s also a…
- New Books in American Studies
Wendy L. Rouse, "Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women's Suffrage Movement" (NYU Press, 2022)
When the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment was commemorated in 2020, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were often the focus of museum exhibits…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeroen Dewulf, "Afro-Atlantic Catholics: America's First Black Christians" (U Notre Dame Press, 2022)
Black Christianity in America has long been studied as a blend of indigenous African and Protestant elements. Jeroen Dewulf redirects the conversation by…
- New Books in American Studies
Julie A. Turnock, "The Empire of Effects: Industrial Light and Magic and the Rendering of Realism" (U Texas Press, 2022)
Just about every major film now comes to us with an assist from digital effects. The results are obvious in superhero fantasies, yet dramas like Roma also rely…
- New Books in American Studies
Paul Adler, "No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
Paul Adler's No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality (U Pennsylvania Press, 2021) is a history of the hardworking but…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael Sidney Fosberg, "Nobody Wants to Talk about It: Race, Identity, and the Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations" (Incognito, 2020)
In Nobody Wants to Talk About It: Race, Identity, and the Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations (Incognito, 2020), Michael Sidney Fosberg draws on…
- New Books in American Studies
Jennifer C. Lucas and Christopher J. Galdieri, "Polarization and Political Party Factions in the 2020 Election" (Lexington, 2022)
The 2020 presidential election has cast a long shadow over American politics. Much of the decorum, propriety, and cordiality of the political world was…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael J. Altman, "Hinduism in America: An Introduction" (Routledge, 2022)
Hinduism in America: An Introduction (Routledge, 2022) is a concise introduction to the long history of religion in the encounter between America and India. It…
- New Books in American Studies
Alicia Gutierrez-Romine, "From Back Alley to the Border: Criminal Abortion in California, 1920-1969" (U Nebraska Press, 2020)
Before 1973's landmark Roe v. Wade decision, abortion in California was illegal for both doctors performing and women seeking the procedure. In From Back Alley…
- New Books in American Studies
Ben Rhodes, "After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made" (Random House, 2021)
Ben Rhodes visited dozens of countries, meeting with politicians and activists confronting the same nationalism and authoritarianism that are tearing America…
- New Books in American Studies
Gamify Everything: Turning Work Into Play . . . for Better and for Worse
Setting goals for the new year? Learning a language? Going for a run? Delivering food? Picking packages off a warehouse shelf for delivery? There’s a game for…
- New Books in American Studies
Monica De La Torre, "Feminista Frequencies: Community Building through Radio in the Yakima Valley" (U Washington Press, 2022)
Beginning in the 1970s Chicana and Chicano organizers turned to community radio broadcasting to educate, entertain, and uplift Mexican American listeners…
- New Books in American Studies
Philip Nash, "Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman" (Routledge, 2022)
Philip Nash's book Clare Boothe Luce: American Renaissance Woman (Routledge, 2022) is a concise and highly readable political biography that examines the life…
New Books in American StudiesReality TV
In this episode of High Theory, Olivia Stowell speaks with Saronik about Reality TV. In the episode she talks about the genesis of the genre in Candid Camera…
- New Books in American Studies
Stu Halpern, "Esther in America" (Maddig, 2020)
The Book of Esther has inspired and impacted the American project since its very inception. Rabbis and ethicists, abolitionists and artists, preachers and…
- New Books in American Studies
The Future of Q Anon: A Discussion with Sophia Moskalenko
Conspiracy theories are not new – but with globalisation and digital media they are perhaps more powerful than ever – and one of the most absurd and yet…
- New Books in American Studies
Autumn Womack, "The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880-1930" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
As the nineteenth century came to a close and questions concerning the future of African American life reached a fever pitch, many social scientists and…
- New Books in American Studies
Gene Andrew Jarrett, "Paul Laurence Dunbar: The Life and Times of a Caged Bird" (Princeton UP, 2022)
A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation…
- New Books in American Studies
Jamil W. Drake, "To Know the Soul of a People: Religion, Race, and the Making of Southern Folk" (Oxford UP, 2022)
To Know the Soul of a People: Religion, Race, and the Making of Southern Folk (Oxford UP, 2022) is a history of religion and race in the agricultural South…
- New Books in American Studies
Moral Kombat: How Mortal Kombat Caused Moral Outrage
You can learn much about a media and political culture by examining when it panics, and who it panics about. And we’ve always panicked about video games, from…
- New Books in American Studies
Postscript: How the Supreme Court Overturned a Century-Old Gun Law…and Changed American Jurisprudence
Today’s Postscript (a special series that allows scholars to comment on pressing contemporary issues) focuses on the US Supreme Court and the Second Amendment…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrew Dubbins, "Into Enemy Waters: A World War II Story of the Demolition Divers Who Became the Navy SEALs" (Diversion Books, 2022)
With echoes of Unbroken; the derring-do and bravado of The Right Stuff; and the battle-forged camaraderie of Band of Brothers, Andrew Dubbins' book Into Enemy…
- New Books in American Studies
Antonio C. Cuyler, "Access, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of Executive Opera Managers of Color in the US" (Routledge, 2020)
Where are the success stories for people of color in opera? In Access, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Cultural Organizations: Insights from the Careers of…
- New Books in American Studies
Cynthia E. Orozco, "Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights: Alonso S. Perales" (Arte Publico Press, 2020)
In this episode, Tiffany speaks with Professor Cynthia Orozco about her new book, Pioneer of Mexican-American Civil Rights: Alonso S. Perales, published with…
- New Books in American Studies
The Journal of Higher Education in Prison
Welcome to The Academic Life! In this episode you’ll hear about: How both of today’s guests became involved in higher education in prison. Why this work is…
- New Books in American Studies
The Pavilion: When Canadians First Had to Confront the Country’s Genocidal Story
Expo 1967 was the centrepiece of Canada’s 100th birthday. Amid the crowds and the pageantry, one building stood out: The Indians of Canada Pavilion. This was…
- New Books in American Studies
Amy Von Lintel and Bonnie Roos, "Three Women Artists: Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West" (Texas A&M UP, 2022)
Offering a fresh perspective on the influence of the American southwest—and particularly West Texas—on the New York art world of the 1950s, Three Women…
- New Books in American Studies
Canada’s Dumbest Public Intellectual: Darts and Letters’ Most Coveted Award
Canada’s intellectual culture is now like a barren soil that struggles to give life to even the simplest flora. They’re just not that smart. We make too many…
- New Books in American Studies
Julius B. Fleming Jr., "Black Patience: Performance, Civil Rights, and the Unfinished Project of Emancipation" (NYU Press, 2022)
“Freedom, Now!” This rallying cry became the most iconic phrase of the Civil Rights Movement, challenging the persistent command that Black people wait—in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Samuel Evan Milner, "Robbing Peter to Pay Paul: Power, Profits, and Productivity in Modern America" (Yale UP, 2021)
Concentrated market power and the weakened sway of corporate stakeholders over management have emerged as leading concerns of American political economy. In…
- New Books in American Studies
Lisa Uperesa, "Gridiron Capital: How American Football Became a Samoan Game" (Duke UP, 2022)
Since the 1970s, a “Polynesian Pipeline” has brought football players from American Sāmoa to Hawaii and the mainland United States to play at the collegiate…
- New Books in American Studies
Max Foran, "The Subjugation of Canadian Wildlife: Failures of Principle and Policy" (McGill-Queen's UP, 2018)
Hardly a day goes by without news of the extinction or endangerment of yet another animal species, followed by urgent but largely unheeded calls for action. An…